The Unusual Knight Errant
by QueXseraXsera
Summary: Alys and Selendrile meet, only this time Alys doesn't want revenge. So something more than a hate-driven goal keeps her and Selendrile together. Part of my Card Deck challenge!
1. Spades

**Author's Note: Just for a bit of background, this is a story in response to a personal challenge. Each chapter is in based on a particular suit of a regular deck of cards (spades hearts, diamonds, clubs). Enjoy!**

Chapter 1: Spades

Selendrile was out stretching his wings when he saw her. He rolled his eyes. Yet another maiden left out for the dragon to devour. Would humans never learn? Well he was definitely not going to help. He had sworn off his role has the hero when the last maiden had fainted and, thinking she was dead, her father and brothers had pursued him everywhere except his hidden mountain cave. They had only stopped after a generous compensation from his hoard—and Selendrile didn't like being generous-and the maiden coming to. This maiden, he could tell, was angry, making her fairly different than all the other sacrifices swooning in fear at the sight of him, What's more, this maiden caught sight of him and yelled into the sky.

"Hey dragon! You want a roasted maiden for lunch? Well come and get me!" Now he had to land, if only out of sheer curiosity. When he landed the aforementioned damsel in distress was fuming.

"You stupid dragons are all the same, always hungry, forever greedy." It seemed the conversation would continue in this vein and Selendrile hardly needed another irate person's opinion about dragons. In fact, he would have let, giving her something to puzzle about—something to confound her silly notions—if it hadn't been for what she said next. "So go ahead. Eat me. I have nothing to lose. Not anymore."

For the first time in his long, long life Selendrile had found an interesting human, what's more an interesting human who was seemingly unafraid of dragons. He decided to pursue this conversation further so he changed into human form. _That_ certainly shut the maiden up. Oh. He'd forgotten. Currently, as human as he was, he was divest of all garments that a human might wear. That and the fact he'd just transformed from beast to man couldn't have helped much.

"Oh for Pete's sake," he said. It seemed there was nothing he could do to placate these humans. He sank down into a sitting position and crossed his legs.

"There. Is that enough to comply with your modest sensibilities? Mind you, I can't get you out of those bonds like this."

"What are you?" the girl asked. Yet, even struck as dumb as she was, cleverness gleamed in her eyes. It seemed as though she would file away Selendrile's answer in her head, to be used (with some benefit to herself) at a later date.

"It should be obvious by now," Selendrile said in a sardonic tone. Then he stood up and remembered the satchel at his ankle which held clothes, which he had for just such situations as this one. He started to put the clothes on and noticed the maiden, despite her supposedly delicate sensibilities, was staring. "What? I'm covering up. Isn't that what you wanted?" Quickly she averted her eyes, at his words.

"You said something about getting me out," she said tentatively, still adamantly refusing to look in his direction. "Can you get to that spade over there? She pointed to a spot on the ground with her foot as her hands were tied behind her back around the wooded pole the villagers tied her to. _So thoughtful of them really_, _not to use iron,_ thought Selendrile wryly. From the scuff marks in the earth around the spade, it was evident that the maiden had tried in vain to get the tool closer to her. However, it remained just out of her reach. Selendrile picked up the useful tool and was about to hand it to her when he remembered that her hands were, quite literally, tied. He sighed. He always regretted his good deeds in the end. Nevertheless, with strength much greater than an ordinary man, he struck through the rope imprisoning her hands with one whack. The maiden freed herself and then glanced at Selendrile in confusion. He took this as his cue to go. Just as he started to turn away from her, the maiden spoke.

"Wait," she said tentatively. "What is your name?" He turned to face her with one raised eyebrow. "I should, at least, get to know the name of the...being fool enough to save me."


	2. Hearts

**A/N:** I know you guys officially hate me for being one of _those_ authors (the ones with long times between updates and short chapters). :) But my computer deleted the whole story (and half of the new chapter I had written) so it was kind of a pain to start over. But I did. Just for you guys and the fact that two alerts and one review on a story I thought no one was going to read is just plain awesome. Oh just FYI, this chapter is in Alys's POV. Just to mess with your minds. :)

Oh btw **Lady Bec of Imagineland:** Thanks for the review! I haven't read the book in a while, so sorry for the OOCness. I tried to fix it in this chapter, while still making Selendrile interesting, though. :D

**Chapter 2: Hearts**

Just for a second the dragon-boy in front of Alys stopped and looked at her as if he was about to answer her question. Alys waited, patience not coming naturally to her, simply curious about the strange creature in front of her. Her rescuer. Finally after another seemingly endless moment of silence, Alys spoke up.

"So, do you make this a habit? You know, saving girls who you are supposed to devour. Or is this just some fluke. After all, this behavior is suspiciously more fitting to a knight errant than a dragon," Alys said looking at the boy curiously, though he wasn't really a boy seeing as he looked to be a year older than her at least. So maybe he was a young man? Alys still wasn't sure what to call him. In Alys mind, she supposed that her conversation would only draw out this shapeshifter of sorts. He couldn't escape from logic or harmless questions. Except that in the next moment he had turned on his heel and strode towards the forest, away from the village. This was exactly where Alys needed to go. She saw her opportunity and seized it.

"Hey!" she called after the dragon-boy, running to catch up with him. He looked unnerved by this, but did not speed up his pace. Alys took this as a concession to her presence. And this was all she needed. "At least let me properly thank you. How about a nice human to fend off the dragon-hunters."

"I can do that myself," he said. "And seeing as you got yourself in this situation in the first place, I doubt you would make much difference. Besides I eat maiden hearts." He said this in a cavalier way, as if he snacked on them often. Alys wasn't sure whether she should push her luck and add to his meals. But she needed this.

"I was outnumbered," Alys replied. This was certainly true; there were too many accusations against her to ever make the town a safe place. "And I'm willing to take the risk of being eaten. Listen, I know you're a cold blooded reptile and all, but you could just help me get out of here. I would—." Alys's plea was cut off by an arrow landing in a tree, only barely missing her head.

"The witch escaped!" cried a group of villagers. She knew they would surge forward, and this time she would not be so lucky to be tied to a stake for a dragon. She would be burned.

"Please," she said barely in a whisper looking earnestly at the dragon-boy. He fixed his unnerving violet eyes on hers and she saw a flicker of understanding. After all, he was hunted too; he knew the wide-eyed fear of prey. And wordlessly he went behind a bush and emerged from it in dragon form, scales and talons glinting. She could feel his talons grasp her arms and lift. And suddenly she was airborne. She soared away from everyone whose words had poured out of their mouths like venom, slowly poisoning the minds of the whole village.

"You know I don't really believe you eat maiden hearts," Alys said to the dragon. "You just said that to scare me." The dragon looked at her out of the corner of his eye. A croaking sound came from his mouth, in between a roar and a hiss. It took a second for Alys to realize that he was laughing.


	3. Diamonds

**A/N: **I am writing this instead of studying for my AP test, the things I do for you guys... :) Anyway this chapter took much longer than neccesary (sorry). I was experiencing MAJOR writer's block and HW stress, but as the year is winding down I'll have more time to write. Yay! Oh and PS I post all my writing updates in my profile so as to not give you false hope when the next chapter turns out to be an author's note. And now to address all your amazing reviews:

**Lady Bec of Imagineland** (I hope I spelled that right): Thanks for your awesome feedback. I did end up having to refer to the book, but I think most of my story works out. (I hope :D)

**Lurking Fish:** Finally! I love editing/ writing advice. I tried to make Selendriles POV flow better. I work better with girl POV's than guys, but I'm always trying to improve. Thanks so much for your comments!

**Nicole:** Thank you! Positive feedback is amazing and definitely encourages me to write more!

**ulquihime7980**: Thank you! I _definitely_ will finish this. One more chapter to go!

**Chapter 3: Diamonds**

Selendrile knew, beyond all possible doubt, that he was certifiably insane. This, of course, could be the only possible reason why he would ever let a human maiden into his lair. That is, without having any ideas for having her as lunch. Not that he ate humans. Sheep and other livestock were more to his taste. Still, he assured himself, he could if he _wanted _to, but who needed the trouble of dealing with humans long enough to eat them? Except that here he was leading her right to the source. Of his treasure, his secret hideaway. Only instead of grasping at it greedily, like he had expected, she fleetingly ran her fingers over it. There was no lust for gold present within her eyes, only humble astonishment, as though she had never expected to be here. _She probably hadn't_, he thought. _What sort of human actually expects to visit a dragon's lair? _

"I don't see any bones," the girl said with a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Or maiden hearts."

"If I ate them, then there would be no trace of them would there?" Selendrile replied with an enigmatic smile.

"I still don't believe you," Alys chattered on. "The only thing you could ever truly covet is gold. And jewels." He followed her eyes as they traced over the light sparkling off of the many precious stones.

"How do you know?" Selendrile asked. "You don't even know my name much less my character."  
"Well, what is it?" she asked. Selendrile raised a debonair eyebrow in confusion. Normally if he did this in the village, any girl within spitting distance would break out into giggles. This one, however, seemed immune.

"Your name, I mean," she explained further. "Mine is Alys. You deserve to know it, saving my life multiple times and all."

"Selendrile," he said easily, the word slithering off his tongue. She studied him for a moment.

"It fits you, I think," she said. Once again he was exasperated by her blatant attempts to study his character. After being a recluse for nearly one hundred years, one doesn't just give up the right to privacy. The way she was looking at him was just too probing, too invasive. After all, he had lived for a hundred years and she for what looked barely seventeen. If anyone should be able to read characters he should.

"Well," he said steering the conversation away from himself. It wasn't so much that he didn't like the attention. He just didn't like that _look_ she kept giving him, the self satisfied one where she said with her eyes that she knew him better than he knew himself. "What are you going to do now?" This seemed to stop her in her tracks. Her confident expression seemed to freeze on her face, her eyes darting nervously like a houseguest who had overstayed her welcome.

"Oh," the girl, Alys, replied drawing out her words as though she was trying to bide her time until she thought of something to say. "Oh, well I—I did have a plan. It just went out of my head. Now let's see…I had decided to run away to another village far, far away from this one." Selendrile snorted.

"You can't stop the travel of gossip," he said in his classic sarcastic manner, laughing at Alys, rather than with her. "There are only so many interesting things to speak of in villages and witches are one of them. If anything, the fact that you escaped will make the news spread faster."

"They don't know that, though," Alys said. "All they saw was a dragon carrying me off."

"If they believe in witches," Selendrile countered staring at Alys with a look of dark understanding. "They will believe in shape-shifters." He wasn't a shape shifter, truly, he just had the magic powers to make him one. That wouldn't matter to the villagers, though. _If anyone ever devoured maidens, villagers did,, _he thought wryly _The would burn them or leave them to die. Dragons never needed maidens in the first place._  
"Oh," responded Alys, her assurance of her future diminished. "Well I hadn't thought of that. There must be something else for me. Let's see here…If villages are out of the question how about a house in the woods. Yes that's perfect. Just deposit me in the middle of a far-off forest and I will spend the rest of my days as a hermit." Selendrile couldn't suppress a smile, albeit a sarcastic one. He couldn't imagine Alys being a hermit, especially considering her propensity to talk her companions to death. He imagined her conversing with rocks and trees. Her plan had more serious flaws, however.

"They will most surely suspect you of witchcraft in that case," he said shaking his head. His smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "If anything happens in the village, even a distant one, far away from the tales of an escaped witch, they will suspect you." Alys grimaced at this. Selendrile knew she was imagining what the townsfolk would do, drag her out of her nice quiet hut in the woods and burn her.

"There must be something," Alys repeated, sounding as if she had used up all her good escape plans."You are obviously not thinking hard enough."

"Me?" Selendrile raised his eyebrows. He wasn't the one who needed help. And yet, as usual, he was dragged into being the role of the helper, the protector, the blasted knight-errant. He did not relish the role. Knights did, after all, slay dragons.

"Yes, you. All you've been doing is opposing any suggestion I have. It's very annoying. You are the person, after all, who got me into this mess."

"Are you sure about that?" Selendrile asked looking pointedly at Alys. "Was I the one who prompted you to witchcraft? Or your villagers to hysteria?"

"Ah, but there's the thing," she said with self-assurance born from misconception. "Without a dragon they wouldn't have tied me up and left me out there. There would have been nothing they could do." Selendrile rolled his eyes. She was forgetting that without a dragon they would have burned her, but that was a sore point. And she didn't need anything else to accuse him of.

"All I do is make trouble for you, is that right?" he asked in his characteristically bland manner. Agreeing with her was the best way, after all.

"Yes," she said loftily. "I'm glad you're finally getting it."  
"Then I suppose I shouldn't get in the way of your escape plans," he said softly, walking away as if to leave the cavern. His tone might have been quiet, but his words stopped her in her tracks.

"No, wait!" she called after him. "I didn't say you weren't _useful_. You know these lands better than I, I'm assuming. Flying does tend to cover a longer distance."

"Fine," he said. "First of all you'll want to hide in plain sight. Go to another village and find work at a manor house. Most of the time you'll be kept in there so no one will see your face. It's very easy to be anonymous in a sea of people."

"So I just walk in and ask for a job?" Alys asked. "What if they say no?"

"Then you keep looking. Just be sure not to stay in any one place for too long. And don't stay with anyone."

"Well, I know that," said Alys with a roll of her eyes. "Now how shall I get there?" And then they planned. Selendrile was surprised at how easy it had become to discuss strategies with her. Alys _did_ have some ideas worth mentioning, but she had trouble forming them into real, concrete plans. So Selendrile filled in the holes while Alys mapped out her journey. He knew that he wasn't supposed to help her, that she was human and therefore would turn on him, if not now then eventually. They always did; they being the maidens he tried to save. Either them or the people in their liver, one vengeful father, one belligerent brother would reinforce his cynicism towards the human race. And yet…Alys had no one. He wasn't helping her, Selendrile decided, he was simply…disentangling himself from her presence. Once Alys was gone she would no longer be of his concern. This, he knew even as he thought it, was a lie.

…


End file.
